To make matters worse the belly was getting bigger. It wasn’t only her on her own. She was accompanied by something of the kind of a bloating abdomen which stayed with her from early mornings till late into the night. During the sleep, she didn’t pay attention. In the morning she was kindly reminded that she couldn’t button up her old trousers. For some reason, she was angry that she wasn’t born a man. Having a penis squirting with spermatozoons seemed to be a lot easier than actually growing a living organism inside her womb. She thought about those women in the past, in the ancient history of civilization. She imagined those Neanderthal-like men running around with their erected members, approaching women from behind, fucking the hell out of them and leaving them with swollen bellies, which again turned into a whole lot of men. Maybe at times, those men gave women a leg of a killed mammoth as a reward for their pain and effort. Maybe in time, the mammoth’s leg changed into flowers, partial access to the salary and tax benefits. She didn’t buy this religion stuff about punishing a woman for eating a forbidden fruit, she didn’t buy the traditional concepts of the maternal destiny of a woman. She didn’t think every woman was destined to be a mother. But mothers seemed to have strength, being surrounded by the number of children, surviving the pain of countless childbirths, for years dealing with their warrior partners sexual assaults, rapes or frequent intercourses. The woman was basically fucked-up. Literally and metaphorically. From the start. Statistically, women were more intelligent and better accomplished when it came to professional life, running a business and carrying out duties. And still, they allowed a whole lot of morons to run the world. They allowed themselves to be closed in the kitchen, to be clothed in religious outfits, to be burnt alive for open injustice. What about those millions of women mutilated to make the men satisfied and content? Where were those millions of penises cut off in the name of tradition? Who in the right mind invented the tradition itself? Who allowed to follow a set of rules which made women suffer and made men idle and irresponsible? The world was a hell of sexism, discrimination, and injustice. It didn’t make any sense. Why a woman agreed to bear and rear children, resigning from her professional life, and her man barely washed the dishes after dinner? Why a woman had to make a choice of leaving what she was dreaming about for years in order to make way for someone's dream? Why was it the way it was?
But no… It wasn’t the fight she was fighting. It wasn’t about the world. It was about her.
The real problem was the fact that everybody seemed to deal with the situation quite the same. High-school feminist voices disappeared somewhere in between melting cries over the cuteness a newborn baby. Girls were just waiting to be married off and they would forget about all the years of school. It all came to them so naturally. Even Shrek changed his nasty habits of the bachelorish farting in the swamp and started a family. And even though the majority of women could criticize the laziness of their men, the unfairness of the business life, the difficulty of balancing the work and personal life, they silently agreed to the way of things. They stood over the oven and prepared the dinner. And threw it away when no one appreciated their efforts. She was saddened by the world itself. She was alone with the growing uterus and a complete lack of feelings for its appearance in the world. The child didn’t have any idea of what kind of world it was going to come.
Fortunately, she started eating more. She wasn’t vomiting so much and food actually gave her pleasure. And she did one formal and a rather unpleasant thing. The belly started to be visible and she took a break from studies. She didn’t want any of her student friends to know she was pregnant. She didn’t want anyone to know. Now her days were long and she had the time to think. Somehow she felt mature. Not being forced to go to classes made her think a little bit outside the box. She surrounded herself with fruit, vegetables, and occasional fast food as she was tired of eating healthy all the time. She stayed in her room, watched TV, obsessively cleaned the dust and arranged the wardrobe. Her body changed. The skin on the inner side of her thighs darkened and so did the skin around her nipples. She started feeling the kicks as if an alien resident wanted to leave her body. It didn’t make her happy. It made her feel that there is something living inside her. A human. A little human who took half of her genes and now took some part of her food.
She couldn’t imagine how her flatmate managed to stay inside the house for such a long time. After a week she escaped the room, missing the civilization, people, the sun, air and hustle and bustle of the big city. She missed talking to people, laughing with them, she missed a simple walk she took from the flat to the university. She missed the occasional coffee in the café. So at the weekends, she escaped back to normal life. She went to the movies. She ate a restaurant meal. She had pangs of guilt since she was spending her parents’ money, and they had no idea she was pregnant and had taken a break from studies. Because the rent was lower, she had more money for herself and she decided to make use of her time and flee to the mountains, as she could still walk with her body heavier every week.
And again, when she was walking along the beaten tracks of the mountainous and picturesque countryside, she couldn’t understand why her flatmate chose the other kind of life, where everything was limited to online shopping, comics, books, and digital traveling. She couldn’t understand the home prison.
She walked for a long time, possibly hoping that the child wouldn’t survive the walk in the mountains, but it made it stronger and kicking like crazy. She was overwhelmed by this deep realization that the child, once outside, might be with her forever, forever clinging to her, forever asking for food, cleaning, putting to sleep. This being was to be with her for another eighteen years and this made her terrified. Her only relationship with a man crashed after a couple of years. Her relationship with her parents was square and unemotional. For a lifelong relationship with the child, she simply wasn’t ready.
How beautiful it would be to walk over these mountains as a free person. How exciting she got over the possibility of not being burdened by the growing uterus. How happy she would be if someone had taken from her the miracle of life she had been blessed by some higher power. How amazing it would be to have another eighteen years for herself, to see all the mountains she hadn’t been to, all the forests, all the lakes, all the cities. How ecstatic!
And something happened to her during those weeks. She started ignoring those kicks as if they never happened. She didn’t pay attention to any of the pregnancy symptoms. She deluded herself that her growing belly wasn’t there at all and she just took a gap year to come to her senses and find a new meaning of life.
